The alpha harrumphs and the little male seal’s skin twitches uneasily.

He’s taken a gamble, he realises, and a risky one at that. He should have moved aside and submitted the moment the alpha appeared. He tries to hear past the alpha’s irritated huffing, past his angry presence to the ocean lapping so that he can anchor his breath and slow his heartbeat.

But the alpha seems to know he is awake, or maybe he doesn’t care that he’s asleep. The alpha’s breathing quickens, and he charges. The little male seal feels it and hears it at the same time, and he opens his eyes to see a familiar maw dripping with squid-ink. The alpha’s teeth are bared, and his whiskers and mane ripple in anger as he lumbers closer. The little male seal tries to scramble out of the way, but the alpha is too quick. He lowers his head at the last moment and throws all his weight behind his shoulder, which rams into the little male seal and tosses him into the swirling kelp that fringes the rocks.

The little male seal lets himself sink, spiralling slowly down through the silken tassels and, even though the density of the water dampens his voice, he can hear the alpha honking and roaring into the air above that this is his rock and a certain cocky beta-half-pup should consider himself warned or else.

He considers himself warned.

He knows this alpha. He watched him closely this last harem season as he wasted from muscled bull to spent skeleton. He’s lucky. The alpha has only bulked back half his fat and muscle and he’s lazy with a full belly of squid. If it were just before harem season he would have been twice as vast and twice as testy. He would have likely used his teeth. Last harem season, the little male seal watched a would-be-alpha, who contested the alpha for mating territory, wither and die starving with a ripped-out throat. The little male seal then watched the alpha roar and mount his friend. Her tiny body was flattened under his weight.

If you are male you are pup, then you are half-pup, then you are beta-half-pup and you have to swim south to a haul-out. You stay there for two or three seasons and you come back full-beta. When you are full-beta, you live at the haul-out and return north for every harem season. One day you might win a harem and become alpha.

If you are female you are pup, then you are half-pup, then you are beta-ready and you are invited into a harem. You are mounted and then you become beta, with your teats that ooze thick milk and your hungry new pup each season, and, of course, your harem. Harems are not fixed groupings; females join them and leave them as they desire each season, although they often stay the same. Sister-beta bonds run deep.